"Should Wives Work?" she said. "Answer that offhand! There is a reporter down-stairs for the Sunday Gorgon, who wants five hundred words from you which he is prepared to take down in shorthand. Should Wives Work?"
"Should wives work?" I cried, ferociously. "Would they if they got a chance? Oh, Bee, for heaven's sake, go down and tell him I'm out. Please, Bee."
"No, just give me a few ideas, and I'll go down and enlarge on them, and make up your five hundred words. Your opinion is so valuable. You don't know a single thing about it!"
I got rid of her by some diplomacy, and returned to the Jimmies.
Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury.
"Never mind her, dear," said Mrs. Jimmie. "Think what a beautiful, restful day we shall have to-morrow, wandering about Canterbury cathedral. I can't think of a more beautiful way to spend Sunday. London is simply dreadful on Sunday."
"London is simply dreadful at any time," said Jimmie. "Every restaurant, even the Savoy, closes at midnight. I got shut into the Criterion the other evening in the grill, and had to come out through the hotel, and they unlocked more doors and unclanked more chains than I've heard since I was the prisoner of Chillon. Talk about going wrong in London. You simply couldn't. Goodness is thrust upon you, if you are travelling. If you are a native and belong to the clubs—that's different. But the way they close things in England at the very time of all others that you want them to be open—"
Bee entered.
"Excuse me," she said, in a whisper. Bee thinks if she whispers it is not an interruption. "A committee from the Jewish Hospital would like to know if Aubrey will present a set of his books to the Hospital Library."
"If he does, that will be sixty dollars that he will have paid out this week, for his own books, for the privilege of giving them away. But as this is the last hospital in town that he has not contributed to, tell them yes, and then set the dog on them!" I said, savagely.